By Marly Rusoff
Matthew Quick with his wife, fellow author Alicia Bessette
Why we gather here and why it matters . . .
It is not just the beautiful Lowcountry landscape that makes Beaufort so special. We have an astonishingly rich arts community of writers, musicians, photographers and painters, highlighted by the new King Street Arts Center, now brimming with working artists. A block away, at 601 Bladen Street, is our nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, now entering its 11th year of nurturing and inspiring students, teachers, readers and writers through the transformative power of stories. We are a cornerstone of the recent Freedman Arts District and Beaufort’s cultural renaissance.
The Pat Conroy Literary festival arrives each fall with the same intention: to leave our audiences enraptured, enlightened and ultimately uplifted. This year readers, writers, students and teachers are gathering to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Pat Conroy’s debut novel, The Great Santini, with lectures, panels, author talks, parties, a Sunday brunch, and screenings of two multi-Academy Award-nominated feature films.
Going against the current publishing tide of Romantasy and escape fiction, our second festival headliner, after Pat Conroy himself, is the acclaimed bestselling author Matthew Quick, who will appear briefly on Friday October 23rd to introduce the screening of the Academy Award-winning film based on his novel The Silver Linings Playbook. On Saturday at 1 pm, you may join us as we speak on his writing, families, the movies, publishing, masculinity traps and life, in a discussion of his remarkable first memoir, Dad, Love, Me. His book was written as a letter to his father as his father’s dementia was setting in; it’s a letter he knows his father will never read.
I first met Matthew after he called me at the suggestion of a mutual friend. He and his wife Alicia had recently moved to Beaufort to help his mother care for his father, a troubled and angry man who had been physically and emotionally abusive to him for much of his life.
From the start, our conversations were wide ranging: books, (of course), other writers, my late husband, Mihai, my friendship with Pat and my dedication to his legacy through the nonprofit Conroy Center. We also discussed Matthew’s decision to leave teachinghigh school to write novels, but also the power of stories and myths as expressed through the work of Carl Jung, a fascination we shared. My youthful adventure as a bookstore owner in Minnesota interested Matthew. My small shop had become a gathering place for poets, bringing me into frequent contact with the late poet and author Robert Bly, whose book Iron John bravely took on issue of masculinity, and how damaged fathers so often raised damaged sons. But in the end, our conversations inevitably led back to Pat Conroy, especially The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides.
Eventually Matthew revealed to me that he was under contract to write a first memoir, one that would require his delving into his deeply troubled and painful relationship with a physically and emotionally abusive father. He was worried about the emotional cost: How would his family survive this exposure? How would his publisher and readers react? I was very aware of the stakes he faced as I knew the price Pat had paid for his honesty, including lost relationships and deep depressions that arrived after nearly every book. I also shared how essential Pat’s truth telling was, not only to himself – he once wrote “the story untold could be the one that kills you” – but to his readers. Pat’s courage was repaid by the hundreds of letters he received over his long career, letters from readers who told him, “Your books saved my life.”
I became eager to read Matthew’s fiction and was instantly taken in by his incredible empathy, as expressed in his gorgeously written, truth-telling books. Matthew’s courage is vividly on display in his page-turning novels, five written for adults, four for teens. His novels deal brilliantly with many difficult third–rail topics, from deaths in mass shootings, teenage sex and identity issues, anxiety and mental illness, badly loved children, to unfaithful partners and absent parents. Time and again, he masterfully creates totally believable but flawed or damaged characters that you will come to love –and root for – in each of his beautiful, soul satisfying books.
But memoirs are not fiction. And the clock was ticking. He had a book to deliver to his publisher that would require him to revisit his painful past, with no promise of recovery. And day by day, his father was slipping away. But write the book he did. Dad, Love, Me, recently published, has already been widely hailed as “a masterpiece,” “life changing” and a “must read” by multiple important critics. Readers seem to agree, giving it five stars and calling it “deeply moving.”
The magic of this book is that Matthew, with the help of an extraordinary wife, fellow author Alicia Bessette, his Jungian therapist (a man he names Zeus), and with the support of his mother and a group of male family and friends, (both dead and alive), does recover. And despite – or perhaps because of – his father’s dementia, he learns to love and to forgive his father, and ultimately to use love to save and redeem his father who, he comes to understand, was also badly wounded by his father in his childhood. How wonderful! Matthew’s memoir has arrived with a most unexpected – and remarkable –silver lining.
Pat Conroy was the first writer to teach me that books can save lives. We are extremely lucky to now have Matthew Quick and his wife living here in Beaufort, watching the astonishingly beautiful clouds float by, as he dreams up and writes books that matter.
I hope you will join us as we discuss Dad Love Me at USCB Center for the Arts on Saturday, Oct 24th at 1 pm. A book signing will follow.
Consider purchasing a Premier Pass for this year’s festival!
Your pass includes tickets for the two Academy Award nominated films (The Great Santini with seven nominations, including one for Michael O’Keefe, and The Silver Linings Playbook, which received eight, and a win for Best Actress for Jennfer Lawrence). Also included are two days of amazing presentations by authors and speakers, Saturday night ending with a wonderful Open House party at the Conroy Center where you’ll enjoy food, drink and a chance to dance or simply and clap your hands to the gospel music of The Beaufort Mass Choir.
In addition, the first 100 Premier ticketholders will receive a signed copy of Ahead of Her Time, a biography of Ann Head, Pat Conroy’s teacher and first writing mentor, written by her daughter Nancy Thode.
The first 50 Premier pass holders will also receive a copy of the movie tie-in edition of Matthew Quick’s novel, The Silver Linings Playbook.
Tickets are now available on Eventbrite. Don’t wait until the last moment.
Both movies and programs will take place at the USCB Center for the Arts, located at 805 Carteret Street in Beaufort, SC
Go to www.patconroyliterarycenter.org for full programing, festival details, and to purchase tickets.
Additional tickets for the two films will be available on site at the theater on Friday, Octber 23.
Marly Rusoff is a cofounder of the Pat Conroy Literary Center and was Pat Conroy’s longtime friend and literary agent.
